World Trade Center

The second mainstream 9/11 movie, after Paul Greengrass's United 93, is Oliver Stone's World Trade Centre which focuses more on the heroism of two men who survived the collapse of the towers after their ordinary duty becomes extraordinary. I must admit that Oliver Stone doesn't strike me as the kind of director ideally suited to such a sensitive subject; perhaps if he were around in fifty years and wanted to take a slightly more controversial view on the that day then I can see the logic, but this kind of sensitive and sincere filmmaking simply doesn't seem his style. Unfortunately, the connotations of Nicholas Cage being in Jerry Bruckheimer films lends to the suspicion that it might just be a bit too flag waving and unconvincingly melodramatic. Still, it's had fairly good notices, but its success doubtless depends on the rawness of public emotions on the subject.
Surprisingly, Oliver Stone's most constant musical companion has been John Williams; true, Williams has only scored three of his films, but for the most part, Stone picks and chooses composers as he goes. One rather imagines that in the kind of mode he was for Munich, Williams could have penned something quite special, but honours fall to the rather unlikely choice of Craig Armstrong. For a composer of, what I would deem, rather modest talents, Armstrong seems to get plenty of plum assignments in an impressive array of genres. However, it is evident that for the bombast he often employs elsewhere, he was under strict instructions to be subtle and unobtrusive here. However, unlike the minimalist doom laden synth loops of John Powell's United 93, World Trade Centre provides a rather more humane sound of subtle strings, cello, piano and quite fetching choral passages.

The opening Cello Theme is the score's highlight, a lovely (if not indelible) melody, just emotive enough to engage the listener, but not overwhelmingly so. Unfortunately, the following Piano Theme really does suggest a Jerry Bruckheimer score with very ill advised percussion that turn it from a decent melody into a pop instrumental with all the emotion of plastic. When this style is reprised in Will Ascends, the effect is as jarring as it is depressing. In The Rock it would be perfectly acceptable, but here it's hopelessly ineffective, especially when there is so much fine material in the surrounding cues. A mid-album highlight is the unimaginatively titled World Trade Centre Choral Piece and while it doesn't exactly offer anything revelatory, joins a long list of moving testaments to the heroism and loss of that day.

Given that religious conviction was one of the major motives for the hijackers, it's either impressively strong willed or foolhardy to place quite a strong emphasis on Christian imagery in such a film, at least if the track titles are anything to go by. Having said that, Jimeno Sees Jesus has a gentle ethnic wail that sounds more authentically eastern than litergical. Technically, it's a fair use of such an ethnic musical approximation, but its association with Arabic countries than Christianity is perhaps rather stronger in the mind of the average movie goer. The lengthy John Rescued - Resolution introduces the album's only brass, a trumpet solo, a cliché I can live with given the apparently active avoidance of the instrument elsewhere.

For all the things that Armstrong gets right, World Trade Centre is not perhaps as satisfying as it should be. The album is at least 15 minutes too long and a few of the twinkling central cues could have been omitted as they are not only a bit dull, but some, such as John & Donna Talk About Their Family, are TV movie of the week music at its least inspiring. Indeed, the piano writing as a whole has a easy listening/pop sensibility that works against the sincerity of the string writing which is often very fine indeed - the impressive Elegy, for example. The piano writing needs someone with the touch of, say, Thomas Newman to be truly satisfying, it's just too easy for it to turn soapy as it does so often here. A mixed bag, but the aforementioned string and choral writing is strong and the highlights outlined make the album worthy of investigation.